


Five Lines

by akire_yta



Series: prompt ficlets [298]
Category: thunderbirds are go
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-28
Updated: 2016-07-28
Packaged: 2018-07-27 06:40:54
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 712
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7607713
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/akire_yta/pseuds/akire_yta
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>from the five lines challenge on tumblr -- prompt is the first line, and you had to write a five line story off that.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> chapter one prompt from preludeinz

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a Thunderbird, must be in want of an emergency. Virgil sometimes wondered if he even remembered what downtime felt like. Between Scott’s endless pushing for further, faster, more, the fact that John apparently has turned into a robot with how little sleep he seems to need up there, and the GDF’s decision that the Thunderbirds could technically be classed as ‘cargo’ pilots and thus weren’t subject to flight fatigue ruling, Virgil felt like a man caught up in a knot between them all as they slowly pulled him apart. The fact that he hadn’t crashed yet was more a fluke of engineering and the pilot’s bondwith his bird. As it was, there were a few thin scratches, shining silver in the green that he would sooner or later have to explain to Brains. For now, though, all Virgil could do was turn the nose of T2 towards the always-setting sun and follow once more the sound of someone else calling for help.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> prompt from preludeinz

Gordon Tracy was drunk. It had taken him a long time to learn to say that, longer still to understand, truly, what that meant. He hadn’t touched a drop in three years, had the little token and everything. But there were other substances, more easily acquired, more acceptable, easier to hide. Adrenaline was his poison now, the rush of leaping into the unknown, the sudden surge as it all went to shit and only he could pull it back. Gordon sealed his helmet, touched his token that hung like a charm under his uniform, and threw himself backwards into the freezing dark, pitch black ocean.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> another prompt from prelude

It was a wrong number that started it, the holocomm ringing three times in the center of the villa, and the voice on the other end asking for someone he was not. John was immediately patched in on the emergency line; their number was meant to be more secure than the one for the Prime Minister, or so Lady P had claimed. John listened to the voice repeat its request, and signed off in peals of laughter, but less than a minute later, Scott arrived, red faced and strangely out of breath. “It’s for me,” he muttered, routing the call to his personal comm. Virgil watched him disappear, then called back a still laughing John. “Online dating.”


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> another prelude

Happy families are all alike; the family of a megalomaniacal billionaire with grand, world saving ambitions, is happy in its own way. Material wants were easy enough to satisfy; if you were rich enough and famous enough, strangely enough your money was never taken. Things just appeared, and photographs were taken, and the strange currencies of reputation and image continued to circulate on rarefied air. The bigger the fortune and the grander the ambitions meant that happiness was found, perversely, in the smallest of things. A quiet hour browsing among old books as just another anonymous patron, a long walk alone by the sea, a good beer on a sunny afternoon, simple pleasures. Happiness just seemed to thrive in all the tiny corners where money, and power, and ambition dared not go.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> prelude again

There was a boy called Virgil Grissom Tracy, and he almost deserved it. He hadn’t chosen his name; he hadn’t had much of a choice in anything that had affected the first twenty-one years of his life. So when he finally got to choose for himself, he went as far as he could take it. He had considered choosing a new name, with his new life and new focus, but there was something about hearing ‘Virgil Grissom Tracy’ and villain, and bad guy, and adversary that pleased him. Virgil was making his own choices now, and living with the consequences. It was only fitting that they did the same.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> madilayn prompted this one!

“How did chewing gum even get here?” Lined up like errant children, Virgil, Gordon and Alan all tried to look innocent as Scott pointed again at the offending lump stuck to the back of the pilot’s seat of Thunderbird 1. “Right, if no-one confesses, everyone gets punished. I want all the Birds washed, detailed, and scrubbed!” Unseen in her perch in the rafters, Kayo smirked to herself and unwrapped a fresh stick of gum.


End file.
